Kingspeaker

by Marie Brennan

The king had come to Anahata.

I met him for the first time in the sacred garden of the Temple.  Passing through an archway of fire, I found myself on a path of flower petals, which bruised delicately beneath my bare feet.  Two attendants clothed me in a robe of more petals, fragile silk holding blossoms of the flowers for which the days are named.  Still barefoot, I proceeded, marking along the path the measured steps of my dance.

For that moment, they say, I was the Goddess Triumphant, but I felt no difference.  Only nervousness, that I might misstep in some way.

They had removed the wax at dawn, and even the tiny, faint sounds I had heard since then were a balm for my mind and soul.  Soon, I would hear more.  A new voice awaited me.

Bespoke

by Genevieve Valentine

Martin Spatz, the actor, had gone Vagabonding in 8,000 BC and killed a wild dog that was about to attack him. (It was a blatant violation of the rules–you had to be prepared to die in the past, that was the first thing you signed on the contract. He went to jail over it. They trimmed two years off because he used a stick, and not the pistol he’d brought with him.)

No one could find a direct connection between the dog and the mice, but people speculated. People were still speculating, even though the mice were long dead.

Everything went, sooner or later; the small animals tended to last longer than the large ones, but eventually all that was left were some particularly hardy plants, and the butterflies.  By the next year the butterflies were swarming enough to block out the summer sun, and Disease Control began to intervene.

Charms

by Shweta Narayan

Old Mrs. Farley waves the Daily Mail in Edith’s face and shouts, Did
you see this, dear? She always shouts. She’s half deaf, bless her.

That I did, Edith shouts back. She doesn’t add, When I put them up this morning, stiff as I was from the cold, and again every time another customer asks. Wouldn’t be Christian. Wouldn’t be good business, either. But how the old biddy thinks the papers got on the rack without Edith putting them there, the Lord only knows.

Mrs. Farley slaps the paper onto the counter, rotogravure picture up, next to her packets of willow bark and powdered mummy. Edith tries not to look at it. Fails. That smirking girl staring back with her cigarette, that ugly short hair, the shapeless dress with its silly fringes and its shameless show of calf, frivolous before the great dark mass of Flamel Hall. Girls these days, says Edith. What they wear. Her voice stays steady, but her eyes go to the headline. SPELLCASTING SUFFRAGETTES! And below that some inane babble about the wizards lost in the war, the London College opening its doors, that child dancing right in as though she belongs. . .

Paper Cuts Scissors

by Holly Black

Sandlin stopped at the landing, gesturing grandly as he called down. “It is my belief that books are living things.”

That sent a shiver up Justin’s spine as he thought of Linda.

“And as living things, they need to be protected.” Sandlin walked the rest of the way up the stairs.

Justin rubbed his arms and bit back what he wanted to say. It was readers that needed to be protected, he thought. Books were something that happened to readers. Readers were the victimsof books.

Väinämöinen and the Singing Fish

by Marissa K. Lingen

Whenever a foreigner came to the district, all of the neighbors would
tell him how lucky he was to be in the home of the legendary
Joukahainen, charmer for the ages.  But the foreigners would squint
and say, “Joukahainen?  Never heard of him.  Is he as good as
Väinämöinen?”  And Joukahainen would seethe.

Then he would do all of his best charms.  The birds would sing an
invocation to the spirits of the forest in such piercing beauty that
any man would weep to hear it, and the fire would glow white and blue
and paint pictures of splendor, and the flowers would all
spontaneously bloom, even if it was in the middle of the long night
and snow covered them all.

And then the foreigners would clap Joukahainen on the shoulder and
say, “Keep at it, lad, and someday you’ll be as great as Väinämöinen!”
Or, “When Väinämöinen’s not around, by the gods, you’ll do!”  They
meant to be kindly, but every time he heard the name Väinämöinen,
Joukahainen’s blood boiled.

And Their Lips Rang With The Sun

by Amal El-Mohtar

There was once a Sun-woman, glorious as any of them, named Lam. She was nimble, lithe; she was all of eighteen, quite in her prime, while her bright-eyed acolyte had only just learned the sacred alphabet off by heart. She was a sensible teacher, and differed from her sisters in only one respect.

It was her custom, once the dawn-dance was done, to look out to the very farthest reaches of the horizon and imagine how far the fingers of the Rising Sun could reach, what they touched where her gaze failed. And when the evening was shaken out like a sheet between the arms of her sisters, then, too, rather than look to the closing of her palms, she would chase the last ray of the Sun as it vanished over the desert and the mountains, and wonder where She went, where She slept, and in whose bed.

These were unnecessary thoughts for a Sun-woman to have, to be sure, but perhaps none had loved the Sun quite so completely as she.

It happened one afternoon that Lam looked out, as was her wont, towards the west, and wondered. But while she thought her puzzle-thoughts, she became aware of eyes on her, and looked down to the great square before the temple of the Sun.

Watermark

by Michael Greenhut

Dear Father:

If you are reading this, Dariael murdered me.

Though I am not your favorite daughter, you also know I’m not the type of sixteen-year-old to feign suicide for sympathy. For the moment, I ask only that you believe in my abilities as a threadkeeper. If my sorcery works, you can save me in your universe. If you’re too busy to follow my instructions, you’ll never see me again.

In my timeline, I wrote this letter with your (presumably) grieving hands after you channeled me through a favorite memory. Naturally, Dariael was in the memory too. We had surprised you with that golden fleece jacket for your thirty-fifth birthday. You hugged Dariael, and I hugged you both.

The Goats are Going Places

by Tina Connolly

Once in the most boring lunchroom of the most boring junior high school in the world, there sat a girl who refused to be bored for one more minute.  Renee Ryder cut P.E. and found some interesting girls who liked to hang behind the shop building and get artistic with spray paint.  She decided to be their leader.  With Renee in charge, the girls got very good with spray paint.  In the amount of time it took a red light to change, they could paint an entire ocean on a car, with goldfish and seahorses and two dolphins doing it.  But then they got busted for tagging the vice-principal’s minivan, and then Renee was snarky and got expelled, which was fine with her because she’d mastered both the graffiti and the girls by now and it was all so boring.

Renee’s parents shrieked, which was also boring, but then Renee’s aunt Simone stepped in and said Renee could come live with her and go to
the very best junior high in the City.  Renee’s mother, who often called her sister something rhyming with witch, cackled.  “Whatever happens to you, you’ll deserve it,” she said.

“Six bedrooms, a hot tub, my own flatscreen the size of a bed?  You bet I deserve it,” said Renee.  She packed her ripped jeans and her cans of spray paint, her old teddy bear and her lighters, and went to live on 1313 Strega Place with her aunt.